Alone Together by Sherry Turkle Read Free Book Online

to do with it. He doesn’t talk to it or try to teach it. His interest is in “his” Furby, the Furby he nurtured, the Furby he taught. He says, “The Furby that I had before could say ‘again’; it could say ‘hungry.’” Zach believes he was making progress teaching the first Furby a bit of Spanish and French. The first Furby was never “annoying,” but the second Furby is. His Furby is irreplaceable.
    After a few weeks, Zach’s mother calls to ask if their family has my permission to give the replacement Furby to one of Zach’s friends. When I say yes, Zach calmly contemplates the loss of Furby #2. He has loved; he has lost; he is not willing to reinvest. Neither is eight-year-old Holly, who becomes upset and withdrawn when her mother takes the batteries out of her Furby. The family was about to leave on an extended vacation, and the Furby manual suggests taking out a Furby’s batteries if it will go unused for a long time. Holly’s mother did not understand the implications of what she saw as commonsense advice from the manual. She insists, with increasing defensiveness, that she was only “following the instructions.” Wide-eyed, Holly tries to make her mother understand what she has done: when the batteries are removed, Holly says, “the Furby forgets its life.”
    Designed to give users a sense of progress in teaching it, when the Furby evolves over time, it becomes the irreplaceable repository and proof of its owner’s care. The robot and child have traveled a bit of road together. When a Furby forgets, it is as if a friend has become amnesic. A new Furby is a stranger. Zach and Holly cannot bear beginning again with a new Furby that could never be the Furby into which each has poured time and attention.

OPERATING PROCEDURES
     
    In the 1980s, the computer toy Merlin made happy and sad noises depending on whether it was winning or losing the sound-and-light game it played with children. Children saw Merlin as “sort of alive” because of how well it played memory games, but they did not fully believe in Merlin’s shows of emotion. When a Merlin broke down, children were sorry to lose a playmate. When a Furby doesn’t work, however, children see a creature that might be in pain.
    Lily, ten, worries that her broken Furby is hurting. But she doesn’t want to turn it off, because “that means you aren’t taking care of it.” She fears that if she shuts off a Furby in pain, she might make things worse. Two eight-year-olds fret about how much their Furbies sneeze. The first worries that his sneezing Furby is allergic to him. The other fears his Furby got its cold because “I didn’t do a good enough job taking care of him.” Several children become tense when Furbies make unfamiliar sounds that might be signals of distress. I observe children with their other toys: dolls, toy soldiers, action figures. If these toys make strange sounds, they are usually put aside; broken toys lead easily to boredom. But when a Furby is in trouble, children ask, “Is it tired?” “Is it sad?” “Have I hurt it?” “Is it sick?” “What shall I do?”
    Taking care of a robot is a high-stakes game. Things can—and do—go wrong. In one kindergarten, when a Furby breaks down, the children decide they want to heal it. Ten children volunteer, seeing themselves as doctors in an emergency room. They decide they’ll begin by taking it apart.
    The proceedings begin in a state of relative calm. When talking about their sick Furby, the children insist that this breakdown does not mean the end: people get sick and get better. But as soon as scissors and pliers appear, they become anxious. At this point, Alicia screams, “The Furby is going to die!” Sven, to his classmates’ horror, pinpoints the moment when Furbies die: it happens when a Furby’s skin is ripped off. Sven considers the Furby as an animal. You can shave an animal’s fur, and it will live. But you cannot take its skin off. As the operation